Interview Excerpt, Jenny Lay-Flurrie, Microsoft

“Jenny’s been at Microsoft for 13 years. But at one point, early on in her career, when she was at a different company—she almost gave it all up. Jenny’s deaf and when she was just starting out, she wanted to hide the extent of her deafness.

The company wanted to promote Jenny, to put her in charge of employees spread all across Europe. But she felt like she couldn’t take the job—a big way that she communicated with her employees was by reading lips, and she wouldn’t be able to do that remotely.

Instead of talking to her boss about it, she tried to quit. She actually went to a grocery store and picked up an application to become a cashier. Luckily, her boss intervened and convinced her to keep her job, but Jenny says the way she reacted isn’t uncommon.”

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